U.S. Army To Ramp Up Anthrax Purchasing

An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports that the U.S. Army wants to purchase a large supply of an anthrax strain." From the article: "A series of contracts have been uncovered that relate to the US army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. They ask companies to tender for the production of bulk quantities of a non-virulent strain of anthrax, and for equipment to produce significant volumes of other biological agents ... Although the Sterne strain is not thought to be harmful to humans and is used for vaccination, the contracts have caused major concern. 'It raises a serious question over how the US is going to demonstrate its compliance with obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention if it brings these tanks online,'"

I'm afraid

[Elixon]

I don't belive Americans. They scared me very often in recent years. They have full mouth of words like "peace" and see what they do... I think that they have the potential to be very dangerous for the rest of the world. American paranoia plus strong military potential is a real threat. I hope that there are still wise people in the USA who have influence on their "global policy"... I hope for the good of all of us.

Re:Yep

[LtOcelot]

He refused to allow a vigorous inspection to prove he didn't have them.

I guess the UN inspectors recalled immediately before the US invasion just weren't vigorous enough, eh?

And anyway, he likely had them up 'til the day of the invasion, when they were trucked to Syria.

Rationalization springs eternal.

Re:Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont feel like signing in, and I'm sorry that even you educated people dont have access to the vast information out there, but I served in the US Marine Corps and did a deployment in Iraq's Anbar Province where we uncovered several chemical weapons, and chemical weapons labs. The only limited press this received is at this link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html [foxnews.com]

So continue to believe nothing was there, and the UN isn't as corrupt as your accusations of the US. Do remember that the UN stood to lose millions of dollars by terminating the sanctions they imposed on Iraq for years.

Re:Yep

[budgenator]

As a former NBC (Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical) Defense NCO in the US Military, I find it highly suspicious that any country with the incredable amount of NBC Defense equipment as Iraq had and NO chemical or biological warfare agents in even test quantities, could exist. The terms were you destroy the WMD and completely document the destuction; Sadam said basicaly we have no WMD while his people wer doing stupid shit like dumping nerve agents down abandoned wells to hide its existance and destuction, this was in violation of the cease-fire terms, God only knows how much of the stuff got smuggled away only to be used to murder innocent civilian women and children. Also note my use of the words cease-fire terms this was not a new war, it was a continuation of an existing UN approved conflict and was reprossecuted solely by the Iraqi leader's violation of the term.
In hindsight my question is because Sadam not only risked himself and people's very existance to hide WMD that only had to be catalogged and destoryed under controlled and supervised conditions, Who was he willing to risk all to protect?

Re:US Criticism

[MrSteveSD]

Well yes, it was a bit off-topic. But the part about the swine fever is more relevant. There was also a similar incident with Dengue fever. The US has supplied biological weapons to some rather nasty groups and regimes.

With regards to the footage of the farmers, it's true you can never know with 100% certainty that they weren't fighters, but that's true of every man in Iraq you that you could take a thermal picture of. All we have to go on is the evidence we can see. One of the men seems to be working on the tractor on the left, which is rather a strange thing for an insurgent to be doing. Any farmer in the whole of Iraq would be handling tools that could be judged to be potential IEDs when viewed through a grainy heat camera. I don't think its acceptable to shoot unarmed people who look very much like farmers working on a tractor. If they had AK47s and RPGs could clearly be identified, that would be another matter, but that was clearly not the case. From what I've seen of IEDs, they tend to be converted artillery shells (of which there are plenty) and I cannot see any such thing in the footage.

I'm sure plenty of sites say they were insurgents. Plenty of others, including the one I linked to at Indymedia conclude that they were farmers. Based on the video evidence I do not believe my reasoning is "screwed".

What really annoys me is the one sided censorship. When those US workers/mercenaries (we don't exactly know which) were beaten and burned in Fallujah the news channels showed graphic footage of it. I don't recall any fuss being made about the Apache footage. I believe it was shown once on ABC News, and I've not seen it on UK TV at all.